


Partners in Space-Time

by archetypically, spacebrock



Series: Novenom [Yes Some Venom] [2]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Comics), Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Nova (Comics), Venom (Comics), Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Men in Black (Movies) Fusion, Alternate Universe - Twin Peaks Fusion, Alternate Universe - X-Files Fusion, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:21:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 18,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27070381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/archetypically/pseuds/archetypically, https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacebrock/pseuds/spacebrock
Summary: Rich Rider and Eddie Brock work for the government in their top-secret, max-security Area-51 Facility. But what goes on inside those four walls [maybe more walls] isn't always stuff they agree with. Join them as they embark on their quest to fight evil and protect the galaxy - their own way, as much as their position(s) allow.
Relationships: Matt Murdock/Peter Quill, Maybe...more - Relationship, Richard Rider/Eddie Brock, as usual I'm back on my bullshit, who's to say - Relationship
Series: Novenom [Yes Some Venom] [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2147748
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	1. Prologue

“Paperwork. Bane of our existence.” There was a squeak as the chair underneath Eddie rotated, the agent in question spinning, foot kicking the side of Rich’s desk in the process to keep up momentum. Rich glanced up, one hand buried in his sea of curls, then hid a smile as he ducked back down, mulling over the...same page he’d been looking at for hours, quite frankly. Still speaking into his recorder, Eddie persisted - like he was an episode of  _ Twin Peaks,  _ or something, yet to air.

“Agent Brock reporting live from Area-51, same shit, different day...Agent Rider is looking roguishly handsome as always, with his devilish charm--”

“Shut up,” Rich laughed outright, balling up a piece of notebook paper and flinging it Eddie’s way. “I’m  _ trying  _ to concentrate. You’re being ridiculous.”

“Please note that Agent Brock has been  _ viciously  _ attacked by Rider at this date and time -” Eddie melodramatically checked his watch, paper ball now clutched in his hand, grinning from ear to stuck-out ear. “October 10th, 1991, brutally - hey!” 

Another paper ball struck him, and this time, Eddie flung a ball back, leaving Rich to erupt into quiet giggles yet again. “He’s very badly-behaved,” Eddie noted, clicking the recorder off and setting it aside. “You  _ are, _ ” he added, pushing himself back to his desk with a scoot of his foot against the desk once again. Shaking his head, Rich grinned and finally flipped to the next page of his report, giving up for the time being.

They’d been partners for two years, eight months now - “but who’s counting,” Eddie had jested, after presenting Rich with a box of cake-doughnuts on the second anniversary. In that time, Rich had come to understand the oddities of Eddie’s demeanor - the little ways he got him to loosen up and dig himself out of a corner of frustration embedded in the margins, scrawled between the lines - therein lay the possibility for jokes, jibes, and jabs. All of which felt like a balm, given the difficult nature of their work.

The facility was, unfortunately, everything the radical reporters said it was - not to beat around the bush, it was an institution for scientific and astrobiological research. In conclusion, it was - a house for aliens, experiments, and a myriad of unsightly practices that’d rubbed both of them the wrong way for a long time. It was obvious in their unspoken words and knowing looks, though only when the cameras weren’t on them. 

To the rest of the world, Eddie and Rich were paper salesmen, particularly in the areas of Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. They hit all four in a cycle, occasionally making the trek to Seattle or St. Petersburg [Florida, not Russia, they’d made that mistake  _ exactly  _ once and found a yeti, so - not a total loss, really] in Eddie’s two-door black Pontiac Firebird. Hardly an inconspicuous car, but he’d insisted everyone would fixate on that - rather than the stashed-out governmental vans posing as dumpsters or deliveries in the strangest of places.

“There  _ is  _ a method to my madness, you know,” he informed Rich idly one day on one of their longer drives. In that moment, Rich had caught the smirk at the corner of Eddie’s mouth and lingered on it - but decided to roll his eyes rather than comment on Eddie’s particular brand of mischief. Sometimes it was better to let sleeping chaos lie.

They had enough of that to deal with in their everyday lives.

Part of the training process had been ensuring a bond was made between agents, and - it was hardly required. Trust exercises, improvizations, reflexes...they floated together in a way that harmonized almost-instantly. One look from Rich and no words needed speaking, much like their silent complaints and disagreements with management. But in the heat of a conflict, Rich could glance left and Eddie would move to stun or fire accordingly. Eddie could take a knee and Rich would launch off an attack with the other man supporting him. Whatever they did, wherever they went, they were individually a force to be reckoned with.

And together, they were practically teflon. 

It was just a matter of feeling, after nearly three years in this place, that something was definitely wrong. And if it wasn’t their partnership; that begged the question of what it was, exactly. Perhaps the treatment of alien lifeforms, though beyond retrieval, intake, and orientation, agents with their clearance weren’t expected to participate further. They were instead reassured that all patients [or “guests”] were treated equally in-line with the personnel department’s thoughtful input. 

“Bunch of horseshit,” Eddie stated flatly, the first time he’d heard it - which of course had earned him a writeup [and a low-five from Rich, who’d been stunned into laughter in the debriefing room - but spared anything disciplinary for the time being]. He agreed, of course - he’d been around enough of the bigwig types to know when he, too, was having smoke blown up his ass.

But he also felt that, maybe - just maybe - the granules of why he had joined the org in the first place still remained. That, or…

His eyes slid toward Eddie; back to the present, across the room from him, now typing away merrily at his computer. The lines of his partner’s face were pulled taught in concentration; a little flicker of consternation right between the brows. His fingers flew; however, across the keys - and Rich realized, belatedly, he had taken one of the reports off his desk to do up for him, alongside his own.

“Hey - I thought I was going to tackle the Snyder case,” Rich protested. Eddie glanced up, smiling faintly, and for a moment, the buzzing lights of their basement-bunker office, the sterile decorations on the very beige walls, and the atmosphere of purposefully-barren environment blossomed with color. Maybe it was the pink of Eddie’s ears; a blush from being caught in the act, or perhaps it was the rose-tinted view Rich’s world took on when around him. 

“Washington can wait,” Eddie said brightly, shrugging a shoulder, “Salt Lake couldn’t. I’ve got Utah, you worry about finishing the minutiae on the Memphis weirdness. Mothman? All the way out there? Get serious, the migratory path is clearly elsewhere. Judging by the trajectory; wingspan, and the weird weather the Gulf’s been having, it stands to reason he’d - what?” Rich’s smile was positively devilish.

“Nothing,” he said, catching himself and shrugging, tapping a pen against his stack of papers Quite Importantly. “It’s just - this hasn’t dulled for you at all, has it?” He asked quietly. Eddie glanced up again from the computer, a couple of fingers loosening his perpetually-loose tie, collar half-raised. Blue eyes blinked, then softened, and Eddie shook his head, mouth shrugging.

“Ah - no, actually, it...hasn’t.” To find out it was all real, to be a part of it, to chase down the mysteries he’d felt drawn to his entire life - Rich had gotten into this to help people, and Eddie supposed he had, too. They approached it from different directions, but Rich was a better sleuth than he knew, and Eddie was a harder hitter than he gave himself credit for. They balanced out. Better than any partnership he’d ever had previously.

As a member of the FBI looking into criminal profiling, he’d started to pick up on patterns and cases - connecting with those more than Annie; than any other partner, really - and, to be perfectly honest, Eddie  _ knew  _ he’d fucked up that relationship. He’d misread signals, or - she had, or something, and altogether, they’d ended up falling apart and going their separate ways. She got the promotion, and he gave himself the boot, which...was how he’d wound up here, coincidentally. 

In a way, he was thankful for it. He did believe things happened for a reason, and, needless to say, that reason - well, one of them - 

Was sitting across from him, legs up on his desk, folded at the ankles, tossing another piece of paper from hand to hand. Their handshake the first day; the instant connection - that, too, felt like a thread of fate pulled upon by an unseen hand, steering them together. And, quite frankly, Eddie welcomed that path forward. Rich had just - made sense from day one, and while he thought he might never know why, Eddie knew he’d be content to let that remain a mystery. And enjoy this while he could.

Which led him to his next suggestion: “whaddya say I wrap this report up, send it off, and we go take an ice cream break?” Rich’s nose crinkled; bemused.

“Ice cream? Don’t you mean coffee?” Eddie shook his head, and Rich motioned with both hands. “Eddie - it’s...it’s 11 in the morning, pal.”

“Your point?” Eddie cocked a brow, and Rich huffed a laugh, dragging his legs off the desk to get up and stretch instead. “Ice cream doesn’t have a set hour, y’know.”

“You’d eat sweets all day long if you could,” Rich countered, and Eddie smirked, eyes lighting up as he finished off the report in question with a couple flourishing thoughts toward the end. Pure poetic speculation on whether or not the haunting sounds of the canyon’s cries were anything to be concerned about or not, and recovered items therein - but words nonetheless. They had a quota to fill, after all - an expected ten successful cases a year. And, in this, they’d already hit seven - seven and a half, if you counted extraterrestrial undertakings in the form of junk retrieval. And it was only October. Plenty of time to go.

Before Eddie could even leave his seat, however, the red phone in the middle of the room between them - indeed the only spot of color in their monochrome office space - rang sharply for attention.

As always, the two agents met gazes without any words - Eddie already eager for the next case, and Rich just a little bit tired.

But between them, there was a mutual understanding: they’d get the job done. After all, once here - 

They didn’t get to quit.


	2. Emotions in Afterglow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The title is more a pipe dream, really. Or at least, it's playing on the radio.

“The  _ Platters? _ ” Rich asked skeptically, clutching the handle above the car door with a pained expression on his face. Eddie grinned outright, hands spinning the wheel as they whipped around a bend in the backroad, leaves flying under the Firebird to streak like flames behind them. “You don’t have anything, you know...Top 40ish?”

“Top 40? God, you’re vanilla,  _ Richard _ ,” Eddie teased, and Rich pulled another face, glancing out the window into the wet, dreary weather around himself and Eddie. “We’ve got miles to go before we sleep, and you want me to hit snooze on Mariah Carey again.”

“There’s also Celine Dion, Bryan Adams…” Eddie started laughing in the middle of Rich’s meager protests and avoided the gentle swat of the other man’s hand. “It can’t be all rock and roll all the time,  _ Edward, _ and it sure as hell can’t be the  _ Platters. _ Now,  _ that’s _ a snooze _. _ ” 

There it was - the inevitable back-and-forth he’d come to call theirs. It felt...right, somehow - the extension and fullness of one another’s names, old and married. Tried and true. Eddie’s snickers shook his broad shoulders, and heat scaled the back of his neck as he focused on the road with sudden difficulty, clearing his throat. One more adjustment of his half-mangled tie and the agent was centered again - or so he told himself. 

_ Edward. _

They had to know everything about each other, after all, for this to work. Richard  _ Gaylord  _ Rider, Edward  _ Charles Allan  _ Brock...Eddie; the Taurus-Gemini with a mushroom allergy. Rich,  _ never Richie,  _ except on special occasions, raised on Long Island for most of his life,  _ loved  _ pop music - 

Fact after fact tucked away in case either of them got compromised in any way, shape, or form. Everything they did, they just about did together - clocked in, worked, had lunch [9/10 times, one or the other had to  _ convince  _ his partner to actually  _ take  _ a lunch], worked more, slept in the lounge upon occasion - brushed their teeth, even slept together - 

Though - Eddie’s eyes widened a little as realization struck, fingers taut on the wheel -  _ not like that. _ As if worried Rich [or whoever else in the government] might somehow be listening in on his thoughts, Eddie chanced a look his partner’s way. 

Rich was sighing deeply as the song rolled into something equally old and rusting away; the fraying sound this time that of the Three Degrees. Leaves slapped the windshield, alerting Eddie again to what he was actually doing [not that he was doing Rich, not by a long shot, was he  _ that  _ pent up that his thoughts traveled that way? Jesus]. 

Shifting the glovebox open, he blindly fumbled for another couple tapes as Rich furrowed his brow and looked back his way, a wry tug to the corner of his mouth.

“What, did I sufficiently shame you into changing the music?” Eddie scoffed faintly at the question, turning a tape over in his hand and risking a glance when the road straightened out again. Right - something nice and neutral. Not one of the tapes he’d bequeathed to a charge in their care. 

He was told he  _ really  _ needed to stop doing that - not by Rich, who thought the way the ‘guests’ were accommodated was less-than-amenable as it stood, but by management. It didn’t matter too much, however - a little music here or there never hurt anybody. And besides…

His mind wandered back to where the phonecall had taken him and Rich - separate, yet together - just hours prior to hitting the road.

_ “Whatcha bring me this time, Eddie?”  _ Gleeful hazel eyes, sunken with exhaustion, studied him almost manically across the table. With a faint smile, the agent in question tugged his briefcase up into view, popped it open, and produced not one or two but  _ five _ mixtapes, sliding them across the table’s polished surface. The guest with the golden hair fell upon them as much as a cuffed individual could, all but inhaling their plastic-vinyl smell, purely boyish joy on his face. “Oh, baby. The  _ motherlode. _ ”

“How you doin’, Pete?” A shrug of a long face and Peter was beaming, clutching a cassette tape to his lips as if bestowing a kiss to the artists stored therein directly. Eddie nodded, eyes crinkling. 

“No handsome Mr. Rider today?” Peter asked innocently. Eddie’s face cleaved in a grin, and he shook his head a little, gaze lingering on the gash of amethyst just under Peter’s arm. The plain gray clothes did nothing to hide the oddities - the slightly-sharp teeth, the scar on his arm, nor anything else - minutiae, all details reported meticulously by the man sitting across from him now. Rich so often got sidetracked talking to Peter that they’d taken to keeping the two apart - 

Which was why Rich was, instead, doing direct intake - the latest guest from the airport, coming to stay with them. He was - ornery, they said, and difficult - one of the products of the MK Ultra experiments of the bygone era, all-grown-up. Peter himself wasn’t far off in similarity - while his testing was “strictly humane”, it was more a matter of just how  _ human _ the  _ humane  _ aspects were - he did, after all, contain xenobiology. And as such…

“We wanted to give you the head’s up, Peter,” Eddie spread his hands, smiling a little. “You’re gonna be sharing a room. Got a new guy comin’ in. Matt, his name is - Matthew Murdock. You two’ll bunk up together.” Confusion on a pretty, tired face. Eddie huffed, shrugging his brows. “Sometimes - MK Ultra, the uh - the experimental process works too well. Guy’s a little too dangerous to be around ordinary people, but...we think you might be somebody equipped to handle him. Make him feel more at home.” A beat, and then -

“Budget cuts, too.” Peter nodded at that. At least that part, regrettably, made sense to both of them. 

“That’s...all well and good for the time being, but.” There was a  _ clink,  _ a jingle, and Peter lifted his hands in a benign gesture of freedom. The cuffs lay neatly on the table, semi-encircling the tapes. “I’m getting out again, you know,” he informed brightly. Eddie sighed, studying him from under his lashes as he rose from his seat.

“For your sake, I hope that’s not true, Pete.” 

“We’ll see, Eddie.  _ Say hi to Rich for me... _ ”

And thereafter he’d gone to ensure intake hadn’t bothered Rich - he’d had a hard time with them lately. Retrieval, field work, giving orders to recon teams - those parts were all fine. It was the dealing with people that sometimes weighed him down, regardless of the situation.

It’d apparently been more of the same, because Rich wasn’t in the office, he wasn’t in the canteen, or the latrine, or the showers - which meant, at this time of day, following what sounded like a devil of a time, he would be…

“Right on target,” Eddie murmured, spying Rich at the end of the practice range hallway, his eyes shifting across the other man’s shoulders. Behind glass goggles, his face was tense - jaw locked and posture perfect. He was a routine soldier to the government, but - given their tendency to overlook things at times, they might not’ve noticed what Eddie saw instead. The slight tremor in his right pinkie; the faint moisture in bright blue eyes. Or the fact that he was the kind of pale a person got after a reminder of something  _ awful. _

And yet, still he hit dead center every time where the target was concerned, hands cupped together prayerfully around his gun. The only time he missed was when Eddie leaned in toward him. He missed  _ badly,  _ too, the bullet lodging itself in the cement wall behind the target itself. 

“That bad, huh?” Rich didn’t say anything, lowering the gun after a moment before managing a nod. Eddie winced. “Okay - well. How’s about we hit the diner down the way and just...take off early for the next run up to Northern California. Whaddya say?”  _ Run away with me,  _ his face said, earnest and hopeful. Rich looked sidelong at Eddie, lips wryly quirking.

“You’re offering me an escape from work with... _ more _ work?”

“There’s a  _ diner  _ in-between,  _ and  _ music, and my company.” Eddie spread his arms. “What more could you  _ need _ ?” To talk about it, probably. But Eddie knew if he needled, wheedled, and bribed, Rich would come around in time. Couldn’t force it. 

“Fine,” Rich said, brows raised in defeat. “But I’m getting two orders of french fries.” Eddie laughed, hand clapping the back of Rich’s neck in a brief knead as he stole him away from the pellets, bullets, and pain he didn’t want to talk about yet.

_ Yet  _ being the operative word. 

_ “You got a deal.” _

“Anyway,” back to the car, back to the moment. Eddie turned the tapes over in his hand. Perfect. The label shone up at him like a holy little miracle to lift anybody’s bad mood, in theory. “How about something else?”

“Please don’t be  _ The Road to Nowhere _ ,” Rich groaned softly under his breath, hand rubbing his forehead. 

“It’s  _ The Road to Nowhere _ , yaaay,” Eddie cackled, shoving the cassette into the tape-deck accordingly. Rich tossed his head back with a grimace and went back to staring out the window. 

His surprise was unparalleled when Mariah Carey floated through the speakers instead, cobalt eyes clocking Eddie’s way once more. The other agent screwed up his face, shrugging with his hands. “‘Musta grabbed the wrong one.”  _ He hadn’t. _

“...must’ve,” Rich agreed [knowing full well that wasn’t the case] — and his smile was  _ radiant. _ Even out of the corner of his eye, Eddie caught it, splendidly bright. Just as well, Eddie figured, as they rounded the bend and entered the ramshackle town of Grayhaven [ _ population 401 _ ]. By the looks of things, this wasn’t going to be an easy haul. 

But that didn’t stop Rich from caterwauling along to a song he loved far too dearly; one Eddie, too, had learned by heart in rapid succession from how much Rich ran back to it for comfort:

_ “In the morning when I rise _

_ You are the first thing on my mind _

_ And in the middle of the night _

_ I feel your heartbeat next to mine…!” _

And despite the strangeness of their lives, and the missions they took, Eddie found himself nodding along.

_ Yeah, Mariah - couldn’t agree more. _

That was what partnership was, after all. And that’s all it ever could be. Comfort, support, missions, and movement forward no matter what.

Rubber and asphalt, music and wind, wet leaves and the world before them, Rich and Eddie rolled into Grayhaven ahead of an incoming storm.


	3. Through With Sleeping on the Sidewalk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [x-files theme intensifies, no other summary needed]

“You said this was a Class II manifestation of vaporous intent!” Rich was hollering, his gun halfway across the room and his partner blown back across the sawmill floor.

“Yes - but that was before I found out about the  _ ritualistic cult murders taking place six feet away from here, Richard! _ ” Eddie shrieked back, narrowly avoiding the  _ swoop  _ of a phantom nightmare careening its way through the atmosphere toward him. Long, bony fingers stretched Rich’s way, and the other man, finally released from where the ghost had quite literally picked him up off the floor, ducked down to roll and retrieve his gun.

“So what do you propose we do, exactly?” Back to back, as was their preferred position - in  _ partnership  _ \- as always; protecting one another - Rich cocked his gun, and Eddie consulted the pocket manual.

“Apparently, it’s a wraith - meaning we need to salt, sage, or otherwise cleanse the area.” Rich nodded, shrugging with his mouth, looking around the abandoned facility [if it could be called as such] in consideration. His eyes fell to the box of matches settled on an old, dusty barrel. 

Almost as if he had a peek inside Rich’s mind, Eddie automatically said: “Richard no.”

To which Rich grinned - a bright, slightly-apologetic smile - an expression that still somehow managed to read:  _ Richard yes. _

The town had received them well-enough to begin with. All things considered, when suits wandered in, people tended to wander  _ off - _ rather than risk an uneasy interaction or anything otherwise. Suits usually meant banks, government, or both - nothing the ordinary man wanted to deal with, not by a long shot.

But the sawmill that’d fallen to the wayside in disrepair was a sore spot for the town. As much as they wanted to tear it down and move on with their lives, or repair it and hope for the best - strange phenomena meant they were stuck. And so, they’d submitted reports, which had made their way Eddie and Rich’s way through the tangled grapevine of phone wires and fax machines. Thus; there they found themselves, quizzing wary locals and inquiring around.

There were rumors of the “Satanic Panic” variety, of course - another paranormal case, more than preternatural or astrophenomenal from what Eddie and Rich could discern - but there was talk of “naked dances in the woods”, “bonfire chanting” and “piles of bones”. All of which turned out to be, for the most part, the ashy remains of beer cans and cigarette butts or blunts smoked by restless teenagers stuck in this doldrum little village.

It was the effigy they’d found [now destroyed after documentation, fat lot of good that did], in its burlap wrappings, standing attentively at the edge of the forest, that gave them both pause. What had been carved into the pole were runes of a vengeful sort - the nature of which was defined by one of Eddie’s many,  _ many  _ journals - “seriously, man, how do you fit anything in the trunk of this shitmobile” - as  _ highly volatile  _ and  _ risky business.  _ Not to mention pre-invasion Celtic in nature. That, coupled with the chords of herbs and twine looped over the weird scarecrow’s neck - didn’t give them all that much when it came to votes of confidence this was all just one massively hysterical hoax. 

The phantom in the sawmill - whose face was not unlike contorted silly-putty, grayish and weathered by water -was definitely a sign that no such hoax existed at all. Only hideous, distorted truth, as people were able to perceive it. Only abject agony from beyond the grave. 

And now, at the edge of solving the mystery [this was some poor soul who’d died in the mill and been summoned back by misguided teens; “devil-worshippers”, cult fanatics and so on, to enact some kind of adolescent vengeance], Rich wanted to destroy all evidence. 

Then again, Eddie was more or less in agreement, considering what they were up against. The creature swooped again, and - 

Rich rolled, lunging across the dirty floor, over to the barrel with the matches - striking one hard against the side of the barrel before dropping it to the old wood floor - 

Where it promptly went out with a wearied puff of smoke, dissipating on the breeze.

“...Huh,” Rich said quietly, “that - usually works in the movies.”

“Jesus Christ,” Eddie offered - before a great gust of icy wind sent him flying backwards out of the mill with a shriek of surprise. Rich whirled; the phantasm rippling in the air toward him, bony hands outstretched. Arms strained, extending with creaks of overexertion, bone and ligaments on display.

It was like looking directly into the face of Hell, but somehow, not the worst thing Rich had ever seen on the job. 

With the next match struck and already in his hand, Rich didn’t have much time to consider what might actually catch. Somewhere outside, he could hear Eddie floundering out of the water by the big moaning, moss-covered wheel that made the sawmill run - or was supposed to, at any rate. The phantom was lashing out as if in slow-motion. 

Anxiety and trauma, he’d been told, made time move differently.

It also made a man do somewhat crazy things - like set the match to his own tie. Cloth, dye, preservative chemicals.

It caught immediately, and Rich squirmed out of it, the phantom recoiling with a hiss of dismay, flakes of nonexistent ash that dissolved before they could hit the floor.  _ Like horrible snow.  _ Rich wriggled frantically out of his tie - a gift from his mother [he’d call her and apologize later] and held it aloft for the briefest of moments - a noose of silver and blue - before hurling it headlong toward the back of the sawmill.

The tie flew like a fox-tail comet before striking the barrel where he’d picked up the matches to begin with, and Rich hastened back out of the yawning wooden maw that threatened to close around him - 

Not a moment too soon.

**BOOM.**

The last thing Rich remembered before being thrown even more bodily back than Eddie had been - clear over the little boggy pond and into the wooded path they’d parked the car on; thicket cracking all around him - 

Was the brief question of why the  _ hell  _ were there explosives in a sawmill?

“Small towns,” Eddie informed him later, once they were situated for a debrief back at the motel. The two of them were nursing their score of dramatic little injuries - Eddie with a bandaged arm, a bruised temple with blackening eye adjacent, and various cuts or scrapes. The phantom had left her mark in the form of frostbite on Eddie’s hip, a scar he knew would stay - but that was the price of his job. Their job, rather.

Rich, on the other hand, had a sore back and a weakened knee, but despite the great wall of fire that’d sent the cinders of descending tinders sky-high, hadn’t suffered much in the way of his front - just singed material and a split lip, one that made him wince every time he tried to talk. The debrief was slow-going from that, till Eddie of course got fed up and dug the first-aid kit out from under the bed again, dislodged from all their hidden equipment and arsenal accordingly.

“Eddie - it’s fine,” Rich protested - as Eddie hauled himself over to Rich’s side on the bed, making the springs beneath the plastic-y bedspread of green-and-gold flowers bow beneath them. Eddie shook his head, extracting antiseptic and a cotton ball with tweezers, his smile rueful.

"What, you want it to get infected?" Rich started at him skeptically. Eddie, adopting the voice of a would-be Italian gangster, squinted his eyes and squawked, pinching the cotton between tweezers to shake for emphasis:  _ "you wanna be some kinna no-lip freak _ ?" To which Rich responded by promptly bursting into giggles, leaving room for Eddie to attend to his wounds. 

“Can’t kiss girls if your mouth falls off, Rich.”

“Gross,” Rich shot back instantly. “Who says I’m kissing girls anyway?”

Uncomfortable silence fell, sudden and sharp. A chill rushed between them, sending goosebumps up Rich’s arms under his rolled-up sleeves. His partner swallowed hard, then focused in on the task at hand again.

“You were so fucking reckless in there today,” Eddie muttered in his regular voice. Rich’s eyes went half-lidded at that - a grimace barely-restrained as Eddie daubed at the edge of his mouth with the antiseptic, the hiss of pain following very soft. Enough to grab his partner’s attention, however - and, turning the cotton in the tweezers, he dried the antiseptic a little, the burn staying, but softness following. Leaning in, Eddie examined the injury - checking for marks of the supernatural left behind. He’d been mostly kidding about the infection - the no-lip freak scenario, too, but - 

With their jobs, you never knew. Nothing was certain.

Nothing other than he wanted Rich to lead a long, healthy,  _ good  _ life - one that didn’t end in possession, fiery demise, or other similar bad ends. Alien abduction was also off the table, despite how many times Rich tilted his head back at the night sky on their long drives to monotonously intone “get me out of heeeere” at the possible aliens encircling the planet in their respective orbits. 

Eddie would work to ensure Rich got out of the gig safely; someday - even if he never did. They were both risk-takers in their own right, but - 

“I would do it again in a heartbeat, Eddie,” Rich said quietly. They were closer than they had been a couple seconds ago, the cotton still pressed to Rich’s wound, the crescent curl of blood stopped for the time being. Cobalt met cerulean and blended on the palette of compassion, Eddie worriedly searching Rich’s face for answers before staying on his eyes. “No blood ritual or - cult sacrifice or ghost or whatever else would stop me.” 

His hand slowly reached up to catch Eddie’s own, tugging the cotton away from his lips to speak more clearly. Their noses nearly brushed in the yellow glow of the faded motel lamp. Eddie’s entire world was a focal point of yellow and blue. Then white with the glow of Rich’s softest smile yet, voice a little lower and coarser than before. “Because of you.”

“‘Cuz’a me?” Eddie said back, hoarse and unsure. Rich nodded, unblinking, though his lids lowered a little.  _ Tired,  _ Eddie figured,  _ tired, and he’s - he needs rest. I should move away.  _ But he didn’t. He was still looking for signs of ghostly fingerprints; of breakage. Remnants. They still didn’t know who’d murdered anyone to get a ghost to rise - perhaps not a teenage rebellion after all, such things were cliche, and good GOD his mind was racing to get anywhere but where it seemed to keep wanting to go - 

The phone rang, making them both jump apart as if someone had just entered the room unannounced. Eddie fumbled away from Rich after shoving an icepack at him as well - makeshift as it was; a plastic baggie with ice from the machine down the motel hall outside - to answer the phone. 

“Yes? No we’re still - three more days at least. You need us back  _ tomorrow? _ Christ - okay, well...we can try and pull an all-nighter, then - yeah. Yeah, no, no, yeah. Yes. I got it sir. Okay.”

Rich adjusted the bag of ice on his knee as Eddie slunk back to his own bed, sinking down with a sigh before flopping over, pinching his brow and nose with a groan.

“All-nighter?” Rich asked knowingly, already dreading [and knowing] the answer. Eddie nodded under his hand before it flicked away from his face, shrugging contemptuously at the heavens above.

“All-nighter,” he confirmed, and Rich joined him in his groaning.


	4. I've been on tenterhooks, [ending in dirty looks]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> gay repressed feelings? who would've guessed lmaaaaaao  
> see ya

“So, Pete,” Rich smiled brightly at the man across from him, settling into the chair of the borrowed rec room with a shrug of his thumbs; hands clasped. “Here we are again.”

“Here we are again,” Peter echoed with a sigh, rolling his neck in an effort to relieve a crick. “It never ends, does it, Richie?” 

“Agent Rider will be sufficient, thank you,” Rich said, arching an eyebrow - and Peter grinned around an eyetooth digging into his bottom lip, thoroughly amused. 

“Okay,  _ Dick, _ ” Peter said, and Rich had to resist the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose, “let’s go over this one last time.”

They’d been called back, as it turned out, because Peter and his new roommate; the man known as the Devil Himself [or Matt, on a good day] had come to somewhat of a head over their living arrangements already. Matt insisted Peter was too noisy and messy and inflicted a great deal of pain on the senses - whereas Peter complained that Matt was “no fun” and “cramping his style”. 

“And quite frankly, we just don’t click well. I’m supposed to negate him, right?” Rich hesitated, looking down at his notes, then back up at Peter, “but all I seem to do is inflame him. He’s - not easy. He’s the furthest thing from, and honestly?” Peter cocked his head to the side with a shrug of his hands, mirrored in his face, “shouldn’t have to do your job for you guys. I’m not even getting paid for this.”

“Well, it is free room and board,” Rich pointed out - then grimaced slightly at Peter’s withering stare. “Right. I can see why that’d be insufficient. How about an outing?” Peter brightened at that, sitting up a little straighter in his chair. “We can drive you out to the mall nex week.”

“Tomorrow,” Peter said promptly. Rich sighed, rubbing his brow.

“No - not tomorrow. Too short notice. Sunday. Would Sunday work for you?” Peter grinned at that, motioning around the room with his eyes.

“Uh, does it look like I have much else going on?” Rich had to smile at that - he had to smile at a lot of what Peter did or said, for that matter, but - 

“Okay. Just - keep telling me everything about what happened between you and Matt.” Peter, pleased with the bargain and pleased to be paid attention to, preened an eyebrow before folding his hands and leaning forward, shrugging both thumbs.

“Well, Richie--” Rich gave up the losing battle that was any attempt to get Peter to use his actual name, “it went down like this…”

“...and that’s when I punched him in the ribs,” Matt informed Eddie, jaw tensed and grim. Eddie looked up from scribbling his notes down and flipped the clipboard papers over, preparing for the next page. The man in front of him behind the table was the most tersely-coiled spring Eddie had ever stumbled across - and that included the nest of literal rattlesnakes or the hydra; or the basilisk, or any manner of alien species with a tendency to spiral. He was just... _ wound,  _ for lack of a better term. 

Sighing faintly, Eddie sat back in his seat, studying the redhead with the body language of a cornered, slightly-feral creature in handcuffs and blindfold. The blindfold he’d been briefed on - negated some of Matt’s innate abilities, allegedly, to keep him from inducing what was being referred to as  _ an extremely overambitious redistribution of irradiated fear chemicals. _ Supposedly whatever had been done, or happened to him had resulted in an output, secretion, or signal [they still weren’t sure which] that submerged those who looked into his eyes into a place of abject fear. Primal and undeniable.

But Eddie would be lying if he wasn’t curious. Not curious enough to break protocol, mind, but certainly curious enough to ask:

“Was this anything to do with your gifts?” Matt scoffed, sitting back with a pause of bewilderment. The body language changed, just marginally. Just enough to suggest a total lack of amusement. But also, slightly less tension.  _ Interesting. _

Eddie wrote that down, because that was what he did.

“You call them ‘gifts’, Agent Brock.” Matt’s hands lifted, and Eddie had the decency to look startled, as he’d been  _ so  _ sure that Matt’s hands had been tethered mere seconds ago, but - the steel was  _ sizzling,  _ sloughing to the floor in a molten heap. Lips parting, Eddie, for a moment, could pretty much only stare. 

And, naturally -  _ write that down. _

Rubbing unaffected wrists, Matt sighed deeply across from him - a sigh that crackled behind his teeth and smelled like cinnamon. “I’ve been taught to think of them as ‘curses’. Whatever they are...” with a polite bend of his hands, Matt sank forward, still speaking in the same, soft way that best resembled freshly-stoked coals. 

“They are no benefit to me, and they rub Mr. Quill entirely the wrong way.” One hand lifted, and the bandana over his eyes dropped away with a deft tug of his fingers to free the knot. He kept his head bowed, and while the agent could feel the shift in the air that came from the strangeness of such things, 

Debating his options, Eddie peered down at his file, then back up at the man in question. Peter wasn’t easy [not like that], but he wasn’t...difficult, typically. Not in the way that things seemed to be. Eddie tried for casual, though it probably fell a little short - something in his gut nagged at him that the full picture was far from visible, still.

"You mean to tell me you know Peter Quill after just twenty-four little hours?" he drawled. Matt's sightless, amber eyes ticked his way, and with the slightest baring of teeth, Eddie knew he'd stepped too far. Suddenly, the room seemed to go into a temperature roller coaster - rising, falling, back again, over and over, in a spiral as Eddie stayed rooted to his seat, consumed by the fire of shining eyes.

"I know him. I know you, and I know your partner and your  _ fears _ , Eddie. Your  _ desires. _ Or do you think it's not obvious, how much you  **_want_ ** something? You think you're subtle? I can smell it on you," Matt sat back, and Eddie did, too - not realizing how far he'd begun to lean in across the table, drawn in and captivated by golden light. 

"Your desires will be your undoing. Men who sin fall first," Matt informed him. 

"...did uh -" clearing his throat, Eddie checked the clipboard once. Twice. "Did you happen to be taken in by a religious super-cult, or --" he ducked back instinctively as Matt lunged for him again, palms laid flat against the table.

“ **_Let me show you,_ ** ” Matt breathed, and it was all Eddie heard, not the ringing of alarms nor the scrape of a metal chair against a cement floor, “ **_just what it is that makes me hard to get along with._ ** ”

Eddie opened his mouth to speak, but soon found it otherwise occupied.

_ “Be quiet - shh, _ ” Eddie was laughing, stumbling, drunken - down a long, wide hallway. Some luxurious place with black-and-white marble; gold accents. Real swanky. New York, maybe - god, it’d been years since he’d been back properly - Rich beside him, in a suit that for once wasn’t the standard-issue uniform, no - it was a  _ nice  _ one, with crushed-velvet lapels that felt  _ good  _ under his fingers, and Eddie was--

Thrusting Rich against the wall, hands balled in his suit jacket and collared shirt; tie mussed, hair in disarray, staring at his breathless mouth before  _ kissing  _ him. God--

Eddie leaned in and  _ kissed  _ Rich, like he’d been wanting to for longer than he knew, he felt - so long, so  _ full of longing,  _ so full - so yearning - 

Softly, slowly, deeply, till Rich’s mouth yawned around him, hungry, his hands lifting to slide across Eddie’s chest to haul him in, too.  _ I want you back,  _ he said without words, and they’d never needed words, even when Eddie had so many to offer. Rich could stop him in his tracks with just a look, with the lift of a brow. He was...powerful that way. 

They stood there together, entangled, dragging, pulling, until they were flushed against one another, laps strained and bodies heated. Rich captivated him with a broken sigh of “ _ Eddie _ ” on his lips as Eddie broke away to smatter his jaw and his neck with  _ more, more,  _ **_more_ ** kisses, frantically undoing the collar of his shirt. To get to the side of his neck, bowtie clamped in his hand, wrenching - 

“ _ HEY!  _ What’re you two q--”

Eddie shot back in his chair the same time Rich did in the other room; in the middle of Peter’s story, where he’d lost his focus ages ago. Peter paused in his description of something Matt had done to the smoke alarms, his expression odd. Rich was prickled with sweat, shaking, and it drove a line of concern between Peter’s brows, the furrow deep and questioning.

“...Rich?” The actual name, the one he went by, more than  _ Richie  _ or  _ Dick  _ or even - 

“ _ Richard, _ ” Eddie had breathed throatily into his mouth, mere - moments ago, it felt like. It felt as real as the heat that made it so hard to think, the stifling rift between want and fright shoving him upright to his feet with a shaky motion. Numbly; he went through more of the same, gathering papers, blinking away stars. Peter sat up in place, watching him - worry only growing.

“...I think there’s been a breach,” Rich said, voice frayed. Clearing his throat, he nodded to Peter. “Uh - that’s enough for today. Facility outing - Sunday. Mall. Maybe the movies, too, I hear there’s - some good stuff out right now.” 

“Yeah,” Peter said, eyeing Rich strangely. Rich distinctly picked up his bag and placed it, with purpose, in front of himself. Peter cocked a brow, glancing back up. “ _ Twin Peaks.  _ Can we go?”

“Sure. You’ve been - really helpful, Peter.” Rich reached for the door, his neck prickling as Peter coyly added:

“I can...be more helpful, if needed…”

“Nope,” Rich said brightly, forcibly. He opened the door to step out, smiling around a scrunched face at the guest behind him in the interview room. “That’s - you know what, that’s okay. Thank you.” He turned - 

And out of the room next door swept Matt Murdock, blindfolded and cuffed again, muttering “this isn’t necessary - I’m here because I want to be, if you can’t fix this, if you can’t take away  _ my  _ fear, then why the HELL am I even  _ here? _ ” - 

Which boded just as poorly as the expression on Eddie’s face as he stepped out behind the two other agents, shutting and locking the door behind himself.

For a moment, Rich and Eddie stood there in silence, staring off after the retreating figures, rather than one another. Eddie’s sweaty hands gripped his clipboard, and Rich swallowed, hands taut around the handle of his bag. Each of them trying, in their own way, to keep their tentative grip on their respective realities.

“Did you get anything from--”

“Nope. You?”

“Nope,” Rich managed, blinking roundly. “Right - well, I’m...I’ve got--a thing.”

“Me too,” Eddie grunted, nodding fervently. “Def--definitely got a thing.” His eyes darted toward Rich, then away again - and Rich chanced a look at him as Eddie hovered, apparently reluctant to leave. “I’ll--see you at dinner?”

“Sure. Five-thirty?”

“Make it an even forty-five,” Eddie smiled. Their eyes met, and, for a moment, each of them experienced that sudden jolt.  _ Fear.  _ **Desire.** Rich’s lips parted and Eddie froze, backing away a step or two. “See you then.”

It rushed out of him ahead of the way Eddie himself rushed away, and Rich was left under the flickering lights of the hallway, wondering what the hell had just happened - 

And just how in over their heads their place of work was now, with Peter and Matt in their care, a match made to damn a building [or heart] to burn.


	5. You're kind of love drives a man insane

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in partnership with the lovely and talented archetypically; who did Rich's flashback in Grenada. :>   
> enjoy! A look into a little bit more of the boys' lives - and how they got where they did.

**_Grenada, 1985_ **

“I’m bored.”

It’s pointless to say that — maybe even more pointless than it is to try to do  _ anything _ in this sweltering heat. The sun is starting its descent toward the horizon, yet somehow, it still feels like midday; sweat runs down his face and sticks the fabric of his uniform to his skin, and even  _ breathing _ is practically a goddamn trial. You could chalk it up to the middle of July, sure, but in a place like this, the conditions don’t change by January. (He’s been here for going on a year and a half as part of the peacekeeping force, so he’d know.)

Maybe that’s part of what makes the light chuckle coming from beside him even more annoying. That, and the “I think that’s a  _ good _ thing, Rich” that comes shortly afterward.

Back against the boulder they’ve taken up as their joint watch station, Rich turns toward the most annoying thing of all: the remarkably sweat-less face of Wendell Vaughn, his friend and current patrol partner. Just to add insult to injury, there isn’t a single blond hair out of place on his perfect head, and his deep blue eyes are sparkling with way too much amusement.

_ Ugh _ .

Like a true adult with military training, Rich scrunches his face into a scowl. “ _ How _ is it a good thing that I’m bored?”

The chuckle turns into a full-on laugh, a stream flowing into a river. ( _ No,  _ he can’t think about water right now; he’s suddenly acutely aware of just how dry his throat and mouth are.)

“ _ God _ , Rich,” Wendell says when the laughter subsides (though there’s still a hint of it in his voice). “You’re so…  _ you _ .”

Rich has his mouth open, retort at the ready, but just when he’s about to fire, Wendell turns to face him completely, reaching out a hand to clasp him by the shoulder.

“Think about it.” Wendell takes a pause, as if providing the time to actually do just as he’d said. “If you’re bored, that means it’s quiet, and if it’s quiet, that means nothing’s happening. If nothing’s happening, it means we’ve done our job. People are safe.”

His hand gives the shoulder a squeeze, and his voice softens, amusement in his eyes giving way to something more serious. “Means we’ve done some good here. And I know you care about that more than anything else.”

Silence fills the space between them as Rich considers this. As he becomes aware that the hand that had once been on his shoulder moves to playfully tousle his hair. It’s happened a thousand times (it’s Wendell’s favorite way to tease him, after all), but  _ this _ time, there’s something about it he can’t explain. His heart beats out of his chest, practically  _ leaping _ into his throat.

His throat goes even drier than before; he swallows. “Yeah.” His voice is barely above a whisper. “‘Course I do. Just, you know, when I got into this stuff, I thought I’d actually be…  _ doing _ stuff.”

Wendell smiles, warm and — fond. “Oh, believe me. One day, you’ll get a lot more of that than you bargained for.”

Somehow, Rich suddenly realizes, they’ve shifted closer. Impossibly close.

He doesn’t know who leans in first — and, honestly, it doesn’t really matter; they’re both drawn, as if by actual gravity, to the place where they meet in the middle. Where their lips crash together, gently at first, but then hungry and overwhelming, like high tide onto the beach below them. Electricity buzzes just below the surface of his skin, every inch of him crackling to life in a way he knows he’s never felt before.

It’s everything, but also, at the same time, not enough. His hands, which had been hanging limply by his sides, are roaming now; fingers tracing the outline of the strong jaw that at least some part of him has thought about touching for the better part of a year, mussing too-perfect hair, reveling in the feeling of….

Footsteps rustle in the grass behind them, and in an instant, they spring apart, slamming a period down into the middle of a sentence that will never be finished.

\--------------------

In the years after, he goes back there from time to time — mostly in idle moments when the highway hypnosis has taken over on a six-plus-hour drive, or at some wee hour of the morning when he can’t sleep and he’s staring at another unfamiliar, crack-filled ceiling as his partner snores from the next twin bed over.

He’s been going back there a  _ lot _ lately, especially since  _ that _ night in the motel, after he’d been injured. And he hasn’t been able to quite put his finger on why. Not until —

_ He feels Eddie push his back against the wall, feels him crowd his space until there’s nothing else left to feel. No other air left to breathe. It’s dizzying, and totally cliche as it might sound, he thinks his knees might actually go weak from it… at least until, finally, that mouth is on his, just as soft as he’d ever imagined it to be. _

_ A moan escapes parted lips as his hands seek purchase, pulling the other man so close that their bodies are flush. Kisses move down his jaw, to his throat, and his eyes slide closed, shutting out anything that could possibly distract him from  _ **_this_ ** _. _

_ “Eddie,” comes a raspy whisper that he doesn’t even recognize as his own…. _

He stands alone in the hallway, fingers clutching for dear life onto the handle of a bag he’s barely even aware of carrying, the ghost of something he can’t shake keeping his nerves alight and his legs trembling under him. The ghost of something just… in his mind, right?

Yeah, just in his mind — that’s all, is the thought he forcibly beats into his brain. He just needs some fresh air, away from the musty old file smell and walls that are steadily closing in on him; getting outside will do him some good, pull him back to sense. Yeah. He starts walking, slow, tentative steps that take almost no time at all to become brisk.  _ Yeah _ .

But somewhere deep down, in a place that irrevocably exists no matter how many times its existence is denied, he knows he can’t lie to himself; there’s a story from July of 1985 that isn’t done with him.

\--------------------

_**Brooklyn, 1985** _

“Hey, dill-weed, don’t eat all the little hot dogs,” Eddie smiled brightly as he swatted the man currently shoveling the apps aforementioned into his mouth with a determination unrivaled. Peter Parker managed to swallow after a few chugs of eggnog [ _ disgusting, _ Eddie thought, bemused] before sheepishly turning the now-empty plate over in his hands. 

“You’re about five seconds too late,” the other man said - and Eddie sighed deeply; wounded to the core of his being by the sounds of things.

“Please tell me they were at least kosher.”

“They were, li’l beef minis,” Peter insisted - and Eddie swung out his arms, exasperated.

“Dude.”

“What?”

“First you steal my Wall Street lead, then you steal all the kosher franks? Disrespectful.” But there was a  _ look  _ in Eddie’s eye that Peter  _ knew  _ meant trouble, and also that he wasn’t all that mad after all. It was the kind of magnetic pull that dragged others along with him, and they couldn’t help but wander into the fray. Eddie tried to keep most folks out of his particular brand of crossfire, but--

“New case?” His face lit up further at Peter’s question, and his hand came down to squeeze the other’s shoulder, shaking him a little.

“New case,” Eddie crowed triumphantly, “follow me to the back room! Pronto.” Spinning on his heel, he snatched a few rugelach from the plate and gently shifted another reporter out of the way of his line of fire - a bulldozer didn’t stop bulling or dozing, and Eddie was a machine that ran on the fuel of the unknown. 

Of which, apparently, there was plenty. 

Into the back room they stepped, and Peter took a moment to assess the situation - bemused, in part, by the explosion that had apparently occurred. Papers, everywhere - files, boxes, you name it. Eddie, unbothered as ever, strolled into the space with ease; picking his way around the piles, and spun around, hands swinging out of his pockets to gesture to the display nearest.

“So - I ran the correlations and the pattern that keeps coming up is that the sewer system running under 5th--” Eddie pointed to the board upon which he’d put up a massive map of New York and a series of bright red strings died to tacks, “is the place where people keep disappearing. It was two, now we’re looking at double that, per  _ month  _ since the new filtration system went in. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. The evidence is there, it’s just--” he glanced back at Peter, hopeful.

“I could  _ really  _ use a second set of eyes.” 

Furrowing his brow, the young man from Queens coasted closer to the board, trying to discern what it was Eddie was getting at. “You think it has to do with the installation?”

“I mean - I’m comin’ up dry on anything else,” Eddie murmured, scratching his jaw. “Roxxon is involved, but they’re ironclad, I can’t get in or out - not a peep. There’s nothing there but the sense of...I guess just - being walled up, more or less. They’re tight-lipped on a good day. But I know the filtration system was developed by them, so...shady as they typically are, again - I just…” he reached out to twang a couple of ties, sighing deeply. “Pull on the thread and hope for the best.”

Peter crossed his arms after a moment and leaned back against the chair behind him, trying to gain a new perspective. Eddie’s brain seemed to jump from conclusion to conclusion, but - he was the one who saw things. Patterns pulled him in, and he made a point of laying them all out in accordance once the news was ready to roll. Investigative journalism was supposed to be methodical in practice, but - 

Eddie Brock worked in ways outside the norm, in all capacities - that’s what had landed him this job to begin with, but sometimes - like during the middle of a holiday party after an extremely stressful year - he just didn’t know when to quit.

“Well,” Peter said slowly, putting his best foot forward [the right, for those keeping score], rocking a little in place, “I think if you see something, it must be there, right?” Eddie glanced at Peter, then back to the board, then to Peter again. Under the surface of nonplussed bemusement, the butterflies had kicked back up. Peter set a hand on the table instead of the chair, slouching with a squint, and adjusted his glasses, trying to make sense of the board.

The board Eddie had now  _ officially  _ stopped looking at.

Yeah, he’d had a few, and yes, there were other reasons he’d wanted Peter and he to have a moment alone together, but - he really did need to solve the disappearances issue. Before the New Year, preferably, when everyone would be focusing on the next thing, and the next thing, and the thing after that - 

That was the unfortunate aspect - the tendency of  _ things  _ was that they never  _ stopped coming. _ They persisted, and stepping aside - leaving room for  _ nothing,  _ for just a break to breathe - was hard enough as it was. It’d been a fast-paced, grueling few months since he moved to New York, but it was always...easy, somehow, to set a few minutes aside here or there to just talk to Peter.

Peter, who’d shown him around New York, made him feel at home, taken him to Temple Shalom, and just - given him a foothold where his life had been so previously rocky. Not his responsibility at all, but Peter was kind, and…

His fingers settled gingerly over Peter’s own.

For a moment, they stood there; slumped there, in silence. Peter’s eyes darted up to Eddie’s face, and Eddie was careful. Careful not to push, or press, or encourage beyond the faintest flicker of a smile. This was - risky, and he knew he had vodka on his breath, no fixing that, and he knew he’d been bold to even try - 

But he’d seen something. Eddie was so sure he’d seen something.

And yet - 

"So, Eddie--" Peter pulled back slightly, face pink. His fingers jerked out from under Eddie's own, and the loss was icy-cold on the collapsible card-table. "You're from...San Francisco, right?"

The implication was evident. Eddie's stomach dropped. His fingers curled; shamefully, into a ball on the tabletop.

"It’s - just that...how we view the world - it’s different,” Peter rushed out, taking a step or two to the side. Eddie kept his hand where it was. Stayed where he was.

“So I - don't think I can help you with this, unfortunately, I'm not - well-versed, I just...take photos..." Peter mimed a snapshot, already beginning to back away out of the room. Diminuzing himself for the sake of - protection, Eddie supposed numbly. Peter’s back struck the door as he fumbled it open. "But - good luck! I know if anyone can do this, it's you...you work better alone from what I hear, a-anyway..."

Eddie let him go. 

For a long moment, it was just Eddie and the empty room of mysteries & buzzing lights, the yellowing walls stained with cigarette smoke, the creak of wood behind him as the door slid shut, and the all-encompassing feeling of dread that settled in his gut.

He’d been  _ so  _ sure he’d seen something.

\------------

“So - what’re we looking for?” His head came back up, snapped out of the daydream as Rich sauntered into their office, looking no worse for the wear, other than perhaps a little paler than usual. He carried the scent of smoke and the outside with him, the office suddenly that much more alive with somebody else in it. 

Eddie nervously glanced back to the board in question, the stapled houses, pages taken from cryptid filing, genetic discrepancies, eyewitness accounts - a cyclone of chaotic information up for grabs, really - filling his line of sight. Anything to keep from making direct eye-contact with Rich, although - 

“Sorry - fuck, what time is it?” Eddie asked, pinching between his eyes. He had a headache. How long had he been staring at this godforsaken puzzle?

“Don’t worry about it,” Rich breezed, setting his briefcase down with a furrowed brow, watching Eddie’s back. The other man was rubbing his cheeks with a tired hand, lost to his work. “You eat yet?” Eddie shook his head, then checked his watch.  _ Seven?? _

“Jesus Christ,” Eddie muttered, “I just - I was trying to - I got stuck,” he admitted with a huff, working his jaw. Rich pulled himself up from his desk, rummaging around in a drawer, and paused, tossing the packet of gum he’d pulled out from hand to hand instead. 

“That’s not like you,” Rich said, keeping his voice light - but the worried lines of his brow didn’t ease up any, really. “Want me to take a look?” Eddie silently motioned a  _ please  _ between his partner and the board, Rich sidling into frame as he set a stick of gum between his lips and - 

Eddie’d be lying to himself if he said he didn’t linger on the way that gum laid between Rich’s lips.

“...So you’ve got freezing temperature cold spots in this house,” Rich tapped one picture, leaning around Eddie to do so, “then in the same neighborhood, spontaneous combustion, and a sinkhole...people are hearing voices all the time in the woods, and nobody can figure out the source?” 

Rich tugged the gum around his tongue, chewing thoughtfully, and squinted a little. The brush of spearmint against his nose made Eddie shiver as Rich squeezed his shoulder reassuringly. A  _ pat-pat  _ followed, shaking him a little as Rich grinned. “Banshee guilt or burial ground. But given that it’s a highly religious and isolated Pennsylvanian community, I’m guessing the latter.”

It was - so simple. Of course. Eddie’s eyes widened, and he turned back to look at Rich. Their proximity was closer than he expected, somehow, and their noses brushed.

Eddie knew then, as he did every time something like this happened, that he was not alone.

“Richard Rider, I could kiss you right now,” Eddie informed him solemnly.  _ Mock- _ solemnly, he reminded himself. But damn if his voice didn’t hitch a little on the last word. Stumbling toward the finish line. He flashed a dry smile Rich’s way after the fact.  _ Just a joke. Just a harmless joke. _

But then he saw something.

This time there was no mistaking it.

Rich’s eyes dropped to his lips, and, even as he pulled away, laughing outright himself, Eddie saw the way his neck stained pink. Minty sweetness hung between them. 

“Buy me dinner first,” Rich teased, then seemed to pause. Kicking himself, maybe. Eddie knew that he was, at any rate. The man in question looked back at the board, moving a couple of pins to do something about the fidgets building in his fingers. 

“Dinner’s on me,” Eddie announced, decisively moving forward. He snatched a few pieces off the board and shoved them into his jacket pocket, wriggling into the item in question. Rich grinned as he slid back into his coat, shaking his head.

“Sure hope so - I’m broke.”

“Why are you always broke?” Eddie complained, “we make the same amount of money!” Rich grimaced and shrugged, sauntering away backwards toward the door. 

“I lead a luxurious lifestyle, clearly,” he jested - and they felt suddenly much more themselves again, falling back into the familiar patterns and rhythms they’d had for years now. 

The thing about momentum, however, was that it had a habit of gaining on you when you least expected it.

And the thing about seeing patterns was, eventually, things started to add up.


	6. Blue for the blue I feel when I'm feeling down...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a deeper look into this particular...partnership.

One of the patterns Rich noticed was that nobody worked alone. 

That should’ve been obvious to most, probably, he figured - cops seldom worked alone, soldiers certainly shouldn’t, so any other form of governmental protective agency should’ve acted similarly. 

But usually the matches occurred based on personality programming - extensive questionnaires, preferences, interviewing - all of the bells and whistles for optimal balance. Not to mention the eight-hour psych exam. Blue blazes, that’d been a  _ long  _ day of interrogation - who  _ cared  _ if he wasn’t into racquetball? Rich wasn’t even sure he knew what racquetball  _ entailed,  _ exactly - other than it was for rich people, which was more or less his answer. Apparently the Institute thought that was relevant, though - 

And when he’d met Eddie Brock, he’d asked him his thoughts on racquetball - startled to find the answer identical, almost verbatim, to his own. So Rich supposed there was something to the system, if only in that regard.

[He sorely hoped the rumor of captive telepaths was just that - a rumor. His level of stubborn insubordination was, at least for now, kept on the inside. Did  _ not  _ need a repeat of training from the military days down in Virginia.]

Then again, there were some matchups that seemed particularly unusual. Agents Douglas and Whoberi, for example, were far too similar from what he could assess - albeit Whoberi was relatively quiet, and Douglas seemed to have exactly once speaking volume at a time [loud, loud,  **_loud_ ** ]. Gamora and Rich had teamed up on a few missions, but - she struck him as someone who, if possible, could and  _ would  _ work alone at any given opportunity. Douglas, meanwhile, got along with anyone who could tolerate the several hundred decibels of sound he could reach, more or less.

And then there were the sibling pair-ups. 

The Storms, notoriously good at their capture and retention of “guests” [particularly the difficult ones], were also unmatched in their accuracy for tracking, finding, and reducing risks in the field. They were the #1 “Ghost-Crusher” unit; or GC - not to be confused with the GBs, or Ghostbusters, out in New York [and yes - they were real]. Johnny was notoriously charismatic, the golden boy when it came to flashing a smile and distracting any snooping press, whereas Sue tended to operate on the downlow - the true brains of the operation, so often uncredited; save for the “dark horse” awards at the end of the year.

[Literal little “dark horse” figurines were handed out over a continental breakfast. Rich had two. He used them as bookends.]

Sue and Eddie had worked together on projects before — namely the gathering of information for specific comparison of incorporeal figures for presentation [aka nerding over field notes while Rich zoned out for an hour]; whereas Rich and Johnny’s interactions typically led to blowing off steam in the training center [which included racquetball court access for clearance 8 and up. Who knew?]. 

Rich didn’t tend to stay long with the Storms, however — he and Johnny had more parallels than he liked to look in the eye. Between hotheadedness and impulsive tendencies, they had plenty to work on [ _ separately _ ], according to their files. And besides that, there was the feeling Rich had been here before. 

_ Younger brother, and all that.  _

The thought nearly soured his mouthful of milkshake, sitting in the diner, going over their notes with the Three Degrees blaring in the background. Sue’s work on the banshees in Boston was integral to confirming that the infestation Eddie [and Rich] had uncovered was definitely  _ not  _ banshee-related, but a result of disrupted spirits. In working theory, anyway. 

“But still,” Eddie murmured, pouring over the work with a furrow of his brow, “this is super useful to know. I mean — Sue had a way of siphoning the banshee energy via redirected hydronic streams.” Rich, barely listening, reached out to steal a fry off Eddie’s plate. He didn’t notice, still chattering away, gesturing with a fork. “‘Since banshees needed running water to fully activate, steering them by means of a makeshift river might be the most effective methodology to get them out of a place with maximum damage control.’ I mean. Ingenious. Why can’t we all be as subtle as Sue Storm?” 

Eddie paused, glancing up. 

“Did you just steal a fry?”

Rich grinned. 

“Stop  _ doing  _ that,” Eddie said, with absolutely no bite to his words, frowning ineffectively. “Now let’s see what she says about cleansing a disturbed burial ground. Putting spirits to rest.” He squinted at the next couple of pages. “This just says ‘burn it to the ground and don’t rebuild’. Did Johnny do this one? Rich?” Eddie glanced up to see Rich staring out the window, hand under his jaw. “Rich…?”

He was a million miles away again, but - Eddie was used to that. He sighed a little, letting his eyes settle back on the Storm siblings’ words; their work, their lives, just about. They’d been at this since practically just out of high school - the two of them earning their degrees as funded by the government. Scientific preternatural research. Who’da thunk it? 

But Rich - Eddie’d noticed every so often when the concept or topic of other teams, other partners came up - he got a little sidetracked, sometimes. Distant, and borderline unreachable. However, Eddie had his methods - some of which included gently hooking his ankle under one of Rich’s own to jar him out of his thoughts, pulling him back to the present by unlocking his legs and upending his balance.

“Whoa--” Rich’s hand caught the back of the booth; a rueful frown on his face once he realized what Eddie had done. Eddie cocked a brow at him and waited - not that long at all - for Rich’s customary:

“Oh - right. Sorry, what was that? I missed it.” The last bit Eddie half-mouthed along to himself, ignoring Rich’s petulant pout. “Cut me some slack. It’s been a long day. You didn’t feed me on time.”

“Oh, I didn’t feed you on time. Okay, Audrey II,” Eddie sniped back dryly, lips pursed, eyes squinting. “Didn't realize. You need a walk too?”

“Maybe I do,” Rich retorted, and for a moment, things seemed to threaten to simmer over - before Eddie’s shoulders shook and Rich’s eyes twinkled. 

They broke into laughter at the same time, Rich’s eyes crinkling with their telltale laughter lines, Eddie’s face lightening like he’d shed years off a sentence nobody told him he was serving. In the low lights, they were more themselves than they had been in a few hours, even during their brief meeting in their basement office. 

“Salt and burn is standard practice,” Rich said, his brain finally catching up to what Eddie had said. “We can just make a dual development elsewhere and start people over fresh.” Eddie grimaced.

“Thaaat it is an  _ expensive  _ option. Doesn’t the government get tired of doing that?” Rich shrugged with a motion of his hands, not exactly sympathetic.

“Until the Institute enacts a law that prevents the disruption of sacred land and burial soil, I don’t think there are other options right now, unfortunately.” Eddie exhaled, cheeks puffing, and picked up another fry.

“Duly noted.” Rich reached out and took the fry directly from Eddie’s fingers this time, shoveling it into his mouth without delay. Or shame, for that matter. Eddie’s hand closed in the air belatedly; a look of utter annoyance on his face.  _ Obnoxious. _

“Why did you not just order your own fries?” 

“Yours taste better.”

“That’s because you don’t  _ have any, Richard. _ ” His partner’s grin refused to waver, and, reluctantly, Eddie found the smile tugging at his own mouth once again. 

“Whatever. We need to dig into our next methodology. ‘Why You Gotta Move’.” 

_ You gotta move, Robbie! _

For a brief moment, fear itself flashed across Rich’s face. He wasn’t looking at Eddie. He was looking somewhere past him - way, way past him,  _ years ago past him -  _

_ Back to the shoreline where the thing came swooping through the trees, red eyes glowing - horrible, magnetic crimson eyes. Great gray wings, or - long arms, slinging itself unnaturally through the limbs of the trees, picking its long-limbed way through the thicket. A terrifying, gaping mouth of lamprey teeth; rows upon rows moving back down a hungry gullet.  _

_ An unforgettable nightmare. Robbie, running and running and running for his life, but he still had asthma - no more than a freckly kid with glasses, even old as they both were, Rich freshly returned from his time abroad -  _

_ How did he keep peace against things like that?  _

_ He had no gun, he had nothing but a rock and a scream that did nothing, and Robbie -  _

_ Robbie fell. He fell, and then -  _

“Rich.” 

He snapped out of it, again, heart in his throat, nausea draining the color from his face. This time Eddie had snapped his fingers, but - 

More importantly, his hand was on Rich’s arm, just the right kind of squeeze. The anchor, pulling him out of the whirlpool of trauma, giving him a shore. No - a rock. Eddie was...a rock, steady and strong. With worry etched into the granite of his features, laughter long gone. 

Rich breathed.

“...When’s the last time you got some decent rest? Without me snorin’ up a storm across from you,” Eddie asked warily, brows knitting together. Rich managed a shaky smile and shrugged a shoulder, ducking his head. It took a few tries to clear the briny taste of bilious saltwater from his throat, the crashing shore of Long Island Sound still ringing in his ears. 

“It’s okay,” Rich said. It was a mantra he told himself morning, noon, and night. A chant across from the phantom in the mirror; his face dripping with moisture. Sweat; tears, fresh spill from the sink, he didn’t always know or care. Nightmares were like that. 

He never thought he’d have war follow him home, but that’s what it felt like, sometimes. Rich thought he was stronger than that. That he could face these things, compartmentalize effectively, and move on. Others could do it, people who’d had it worse than he did.

_ He went quickly,  _ Agent Saal had told him crisply.  _ He didn’t suffer, Mr. Rider. _

_ Rich,  _ he’d whispered, his hands clenched in his lap. Gloria was in the other room, inconsolable. His  _ mother. _ He could hear her, and - 

_ My name is Rich.  _

He was Richard [redacted] Rider. He was [confidential] age. Star sign: Aries. Good with a firearm. Well. Decent with firearm. Couldn’t get an ego about it. Couldn’t let himself get cocky. 

That’s how people got killed.

“ _ Richard. _ ” This time, Eddie forewent all formality and simply held his hand, across the table, practically leaning all the way over to get to him. With a start, Richard came back to Earth - hopefully for good - and stared at him. Plaintive blues stared back; deep and full of worry. For a moment, Rich thought about lying again, but - 

“I - guess earlier affected me more than I thought.” Eddie’s hand tightened marginally around his own.

“Earlier?”

“The - subjects. I think...the new guy, Murdock, maybe...I just…need some quiet tonight.” Immediately, with his free hand, Eddie shut the file folders and began to sit back, his hand beginning to withdraw from Rich’s own - 

Till Rich gripped him  _ back,  _ and Eddie paused, blinking. For a moment, it was nothing but music and cool lights and the scent of fried food, a little bubble of nostalgia and nothingness around them. 

“We should go for a drive,” they said together - then laughed, Eddie’s ears going red, Rich’s face following suit. Their fingers parted and they parted ways, Eddie rising with a scrunch of his face. 

“I’ll - go pay up front. Eat the rest of my fries. Try’em in the shake.” Rich winced mockingly as Eddie ruffled his hair on his way by, then turned slightly to watch him go. 

_ There  _ was  _ something to be said of partnership _ , he supposed. Eddie’d known what he needed, instinctive - sans telepathy - and he’d felt compelled to suggest it, too - and to be as honest as he dared to be.

Warm fingers; too warm, he felt almost  _ unbearably  _ warm, plucked another fry and dipped it in the shake as directed. Malt, chocolate, salt, and grease erupted across his tongue, and Rich closed his eyes, wallowing - no,  _ savoring  _ \- the suggestion.

Eddie knew what he needed, even if he didn’t say it.

Maybe they knew what they were doing, even if Rich wasn’t sure he did. Even now. 

His whole life, he wasn’t ever sure of anything. 

Least of all himself, but - 

Strangely grateful in light of that, that he didn’t have to be alone.


	7. So let the rain come down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the job, Rich and Eddie encounter a sizable problem.

The long ride down to the contaminated area had been full of the usual music and chatter, but - maybe he was too stuck in his own head, but Eddie’s partner couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right. 

It nagged at him even now, after they scoured all the houses, checking all their boxes, ticking things off their list for later - that there was still more to be done to cleanse, that there were details they hadn’t considered.  _ Something  _ felt off, and he had to wonder whether or not Eddie felt it too.

“Eddie,” Rich asked slowly, shaking the kerosene out over the fading brown lawn, “do you ever get the feeling that what we do is  _ wrong _ ?”

“‘Course I do,” Eddie said promptly, without any hesitation whatsoever. Rich glanced up, startled. “Lots of what we do is wrong. It’s government-mandated. You’d be stupid  _ not  _ to question it.” He looked up - startled to find Rich that much closer than before, putting a hand over his mouth. “Wh--’Wicha--” Eddie shoved at it, but Rich kept it firmly clamped over his lips. Jesus, he wasn’t  _ that  _ paranoid, was he?

“Did you hear that?” Rich asked quietly, and Eddie lost all petulance at once. One hand dipped under his jacket for his gun, taking the safety off. 

He hadn’t, but there it came again - a low, wooden creak, like something massive moving through the trees. 

“Well that’s a sign we should be working  _ faster, _ ” Eddie whispered fiercely, shrugging Rich away and beginning to salt the earth in earnest all around them. Rich hummed an agitated note of agreement before returning to his own task - fuel for the fire they were bound to set, albeit reluctantly. 

It wasn’t that they were opposed to the task at hand, necessarily - it just...felt strange, that was all. To burn down a neighborhood willy-nilly without question would be - ridiculous. But it was what had been in Sue Storm’s notes, and what was approved by upper management.

The only question was whether or not this would make a difference.

But that was the most consistent question in their work. No matter how many monsters they defeated, no matter how many “guests” they brought in - how much of it was actually something that had any real impact on the world? Their world. Half in shadow, half in the light, Rich and Eddie worked tirelessly and fought against forces they still didn’t fully understand. Or - 

At least, Rich felt that he didn’t. Eddie probably did more. But he didn’t want to ask. 

It’d probably just been luck earlier that got him to find the pattern on the board, anyhow.

“So they’ve been told there’s a gas leak,” Eddie murmured, speaking to keep the sound up, even with an ear or two out for the sound of the beast - or whatever it was - out there in the woods nearby, “and that the new development will be ready in a few days time just up the road. Everyone’s stuff has been moved. The gas leak explains the mass hysteria, hallucinations, and the...deterioration of --” Eddie grmaced as he stepped over a beetle mound, his skin crawling a little at the metallic clicking and clacking of their little rotund bodies.  _ Vile. _

“You got a thing with bugs, man?” Rich said lightly - too lightly, for how much the hair on the back of his neck kept standing on-end. He didn’t like to consider that something might actually be out there - more than what their research had informed them there might be. 

“No,” Eddie mumbled, “I just think sometimes the stuff we do lands us in some...creepy, disgusting places, that’s all.” He sighed a little, fidgeting with his collar, tie loose around his neck [Rich was shocked it hadn’t completely fallen off or got shoved into the glove department - as it often did the moment they left the office and got out of sight], before tossing the salt shaker aside, dusting off his hands. A little pinch of the mineral tossed over either shoulder - [“what?” innocently shot Rich’s way per response to his accusatory expression] and they were set to jet.

In the trees, something shifted again - the groan of wood was much more pronounced now, a prominent bowing of oak as if a mast was succumbing to a storm.

Rich had his gun in his hand and a lighter in the other, though the former he put in front of Eddie as an additional block. Blue eyes trained on the shadows between the trees, and Rich swallowed a little.  _ Something got him. _

_ In the woods, that day -  _

_ Robbie -  _

“Rich,” Eddie murmured, and, yet again, Rich was both annoyed and grateful for the tether to reality, as it forced him to face the fact that he kept - drifting, inadvertently. But Eddie caught him, a little center of gravity, and called him back again. “We need to get back to the car. Chuck that thing and let’s go.”

“Did we miss anything?” Rich turned to glance over his shoulder at Eddie, and for a moment, they merely looked at one another. Eddie racked his brain for additional information - socioeconomic stats, ethnic backgrounds, basis for class division, mean, median, and mode of housing costs in the area, historical significance and - 

Nothing immediately came to mind, unless it was something outside of the triangulated area. He couldn’t imagine they’d overlook anything of importance. And yet the crashing, thrashing, gnashing approach through the underbrush was nothing short of ominous. 

But he wasn’t worried, somehow. Whether it was because Rich was looking at him with an expression he couldn’t quite describe, or because they’d had weirder and more dangerous [so far] before - Eddie just knew they’d be fine. 

His smile started to rekindle, hand loosening around his gun - before he looked past Rich at the mammoth configuration of trees that were, slowly, starting to amalgamate into one great mass. A mass which rose, and rose, and rose, until earth and tree, stick and stone, all grew together. Slits the size of sinkholes opened up in what must’ve been the thing’s face, the mossy surface of which split with a slow, rattling sound of shifting rocks.

“...Maybe one thing,” Eddie said weakly, and Rich turned to face the creature with a sudden flash of horror streaked across his face. 

His shooting hand swatted Eddie in the chest sharply as Rich began to back away, snapping the lighter shut. “Start running start running start running stART RUNNING--” 

The chant broke them both out of their stupor as Eddie turned to bolt off toward the car, Rich following suit. Bullets bounced off the behemoth with considerable ricochet, flying into the nearby developments in the dark plot at the end of the tree-lined road. 

“Toss the lighter!” Eddie bellowed, Rich stumbling over a root as the thing began to lift from the ground all around them - not just that one designated area.

“WHAT?” Rich shouted back, ducking under the swing of a shrubbery-lined limb.

“The  _ lighter,  _ Richard!” Fumbling with a hand, Rich triggered the fluid and the flint and  _ threw  _ with all the force he could muster - not bothering to look back as the item burst into flames over his shoulder and struck home on the kerosene-soaked ground.

Immediately, there was a  _ rush  _ and a  **roar** as the creature -  _ a leshy,  _ Eddie finally remembered - flailed and writhed, clawing at its own face with both hands as everything around it began to ignite. How or why this ancient creature decided a  _ housing development  _ was a good place to be - a haunted one, at that - was beyond either agent to care or engage with. It could be laughed about over bad coffee if they got out alive - 

Eddie’s last thought before he hit the ground [besides “oh shit”, of course] was how either of them had missed this? And  _ why  _ there hadn’t been the typical reports affiliated with leshy activity? Unless it had been dormant this entire time, in which case - what had woken it up? And why was it rampaging  _ now? _

All too soon, his foot caught a rock and he fell, however, slamming hard into the asphalt mere yards from the car. Rich spun on his heel -  _ no man left behind  _ \- and for a moment, all he could see was the vertical wall of a forest on fire. Dripping, molten things clung to the surface of the leshy as it reached for them, tendrils and vines glowing with heat - still trying, in that instant, to ensnare them.

Rich tossed his gun toward the car and dropped to scoop Eddie under the arms, flipping him and dragging him upright as the splintering mass of blessed, burning monster looked down upon them from on high, smelling not unlike a campground gone to Hell.

And, in a voice of groaning tinders, it whispered - it  _ roared  _ \- 

**_“HELP US.”_ **

Before all splintered apart; raining ash and forest debris down all around them. In a flash, Eddie scrambled upright and turned - his turn to wrap Rich up in a tight embrace, his broad shoulders catching the cascade of logs and fungi, crashing chaos. In their flipped position, he pushed Rich against the car to brace the impact and clung fast to him, heart hammering. Their faces; streaked with sweat and soot, were close - Rich awkwardly crushed against the driver door as he held Eddie right back without question.

For a moment, everything crackled and hissed, and the only other sound was that of their breath. Eddie withdrew, staring down at Rich after a moment - and, unthinking, brought a hand now filthy from the remnants of fire up to his ashen face, smudging aside a little charcoal; a bit of cinder. Rich blinked at long last up at him, one hand patting Eddie’s arm.

“You okay?” They asked one another simultaneously - and, laughing, Eddie brought his head in to nudge his brow against Rich’s own, lingering. They stood there in silence for a moment, foreheads touching, and let their pulses settle. In. And out. In. And out. Just like Eddie’s meditation video tapes suggested. Rich breathed.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d taken - or let go of - a breath quite so deep.

“This is gonna be hard to put in a report,” Eddie mumbled, squeezing Rich’s neck before letting him go entirely. With a nudge of his hip, he shunted his partner out of the way of the car door, propping it open for him with a motion of his head. “You wanna drive?” Rich shook his head slowly, beginning to slide - on shaky legs - over to the passenger side. Eddie furrowed his brow, watching his departure, and chewed on his bottom lip before sinking into the driver’s seat.

Beyond them, the development blazed - effective, contained by controlled devices. Eddie exhaled, back of his head colliding with the seat - then, wincing, he felt every cut left behind by the branches and boulders the leshy had dropped in its total collapse.  _ Like a souffle from hell _ , he thought, and nearly laughed.

“We blew up a leshy,” Eddie said to the air, voice hoarse from all the smoke he’d inhaled - worse than usual. “Ain’t no checkbox for that shit. It’s also not what we’re ‘sposed to do, but--” Rich was still silent, staring at nothing. Eddie, now genuinely worried, reached out to grasp his shoulder, feeling Rich stiffen beneath his touch.

“...Let’s head back to the motel,” Eddie murmured, “I’ll order in for us. Some Chinese, okay? You can have all the crab rangoon y’want.” Rich nodded, dazedly, and looked out once more at the rows of homes ablaze.

“...The leshy,” he said, voice faint. “Sounded like someone I knew. Once.” 

Eddie, blood running cold, slowly started the car engine. For some reason, that scared him worse than their near-death experience just now.  _ Help us. _

Why would a leshy need their help? Why did it sound like someone Rich  _ knew? _ A million questions.

“Good thing we didn’t just go into this blind,” Eddie groused, buckling up before nudging Rich to do the same. “Somethin’s been off about this whole thing. We’ll figure it out, though. The voice, the unexpected uh...visitor, as it were…” he worried his inner cheek between his teeth, shrugging his brows. One hand found the wheel, and Eddie sighed. 

“It’ll be okay, Richie.” The name slipped out - damn Peter’s influence sometimes - and Eddie nodded to himself. It just - sounded right. Felt right. As did the way Rich finally relaxed, just marginally, beside him. 

“We’ve solved stranger stuff than this,” Eddie firmed up, and drove them away from the Hell they’d left behind them. 

Rich, for all his woes and unease, for once didn’t have the energy to argue. All he had was silent gratitude, and the exhaustion that came from near-fatal things that had no answers yet.


	8. Night Call

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A couple more jobs go...not-so-horribly awry. Could always be worse, right?

As predicted, this incident gets swept under the rug faster than Eddie can call “bullshit”.

They’re handed other cases and sent on their way with a pat on the back for their hard work, but the truth remains: they did what they set out to do, didn’t they? The town doesn’t exist anymore, people are none the wiser about the truth, and the fact that the cry of “help us” happened doesn’t seem to make any bit of difference.

Rich is furious. Beyond furious, actually. He’s put up with enough bureaucracy from these people for long enough, grit his teeth and said  _ nothing _ , but when it comes to getting the job done, they don’t tend to dig any deeper.

So why does this unit even  _ exist _ , he has to wonder -  _ why do they make it a point of collecting enhanced individuals and data if they don’t intend to  _ **_do_ ** _ anything with it _ ? It’s a head shake and another round in the firing range; target practice on point. His hand never shakes when he’s this furious. 

Anger can keep a man steady.

And Eddie knows all about that, too. 

The music doesn’t even come on when they next load up in the car. Rich has to drag himself out of his own tired thoughts to suggest that they put some on. Eddie grunts, dislodged from his own simmering silence [as he typically shuts down when the system fails, angrily penning articles he’ll never release before burning or crumpling them up], and flips the switch. 

Then it’s just nothing but oldies for the next four-hour drive, but that’s alright. Missouri-bound, they coast up from the hot desert into rockier terrain preceded by muddy rivers, the likes of which, strangely, make Rich a little homesick.

Missouri or Oklahoma can’t be further from New York, but there’s something about the desolate little areas that make Rich think of the places he’d wander off to when lost in thought after school, unwilling to go straight home, just wanting a little more time to figure himself out. He never did figure himself out, not completely - but Eddie occasionally remarks, as if reading his thoughts, that it’s a lifelong thing. 

It’s apparent when they get to Missouri they’re a little off their game - namely because Eddie splits to investigate on his own with maybe two or three words to Rich - not at all people-oriented as he might normally be. They’ve gotten reports of men in town going missing. First just a couple of vagrants, a trucker, then a well-known and well-liked gas station attendant. Clearly, someone’s been picking off people they think won’t be missed - but Rich, forced to communicate with locals, finds more and more that there’s very little that goes unnoticed in a town like this.

It’s nice, he thinks, to be around people who actually give a shit. There’s one man, Lucky, who offers Rich everything he could ask for in terms of details in town topography, class, geography, you name it and then some as Eddie’s occupied with taking in detailed work from the scene of each crime. The materials are being bagged and things are handled the way Eddie handles things when stressed - quietly, diligently, and with a shocking amount of subtlety. 

So Rich hangs out with Lucky. Well, not  _ hangs out _ so much as they stroll around town discussing what’s been going on. The man’s fair, with the kind of dark blond hair that makes Rich think of the fields they drove through in order to get out here, to Delta. The town forks around a big part of the river, so the name’s fitting, and Lucky has a good laugh about the moment Rich loses his footing and nearly upends himself into marshy oblivion. 

“People don’t typically come out and check on towns like these.” Blue eyes turn Rich’s way and he loses his train of thought briefly; seeing something of the sea beneath sandy lashes. “They usually pass right by. It’s nice of you and your partner to come by. Check on us folks that fly under the radar. You two serious?”

Rich hasn’t caught the inference, so he simply says: “we’ve been doing this job for like - six years now, I’d say that’s pretty serious.” A brow lifts, and something suddenly clicks into place. Rich offers an awkward laugh, feeling heat flood his cheeks as the water does the shore. “Ah - no, I mean. Not like that. Sorry. No, it’s - we’re nothing like that.”

“...Huh,” Lucky shrugs mildly, squinting over the river as he turns them back toward town, “interesting. I just thought - I dunno. Anyway. Tell me about your job.” And for whatever reason, Rich does.

He’s collected enough data, he figures, by the time the day’s drawing to a close and Lucky ushers him to a local bar, where he can listen in and investigate further. People are chatting, but he hardly hears them over the sound of Lucky’s voice - a timbre and low rasp that makes him smile like a fool in spite of himself, completely distracted. 

But it’s fine, Rich figures. Eddie’s got the other half of their data. They could do this in their sleep, just about. 

“So what’ve you figured out so far?” Lucky asks him, and Rich chuckles faintly, sipping from the hoppy beer in his hand; the bitter bite of citrus chasing the wheaty drink. 

“We know the attacker’s going after the invisible folks,” Rich moves his hand across the bar, indicating. Lucky nods, kicking his foot back against the stool nearest, rocking a little in place. Fidgety. It’s endearing. “Transients; which means they themselves are most likely nomadic. Quick, decisive, nobody sees them come or go - tends to kill by the water, or at least, that’s where the dumping grounds are. But there’s no - bodily fluids,” Rich grimaces faintly. “And all the deceased have smiles on their faces. So I have to wonder if it’s a kind of - kind of neurotoxin,” his heart skips an unexpected beat as something starts to click - 

“You’re  _ real  _ good at pattern recognition,” Lucky says, interrupting and derailing; effectively, his train of thoughts. Rich laughs, shaking his head modestly - and Lucky puts a hand on his arm. “I’m serious, you are. Where’s your partner been this whole time? Not around here--” Lucky motions vaguely to the bar, then sighs, taking another sip of his own beer.

“I know this has to be a long haul, an unforgiving job. You deserve to know your hard work’s seen and appreciated by me and folks in town,” Lucky informs him gently. “So cheers to you, Rich Rider.” Their bottles clink at the opening and they each down another sip, and - 

Suddenly, all Rich can think about is  _ him _ . 

How soft his lips are when they move around his smile. How bright the dark blue of his eyes actually is. How he’s full of impishness and smells like the sea, even though there’s no ocean around for miles. How he looks at Rich like there’s no one else in the universe. When he speaks, Rich hardly hears him, just numbly sets his drink down and follows Lucky outside, somewhere else, into the night where the thrushes and bullfrogs sing - 

Back to their own motel, his and Eddie’s, because Eddie should feel this way, too - all golden and shimmering, surrounded by champagne ecstasy. His back finds the mattress as Lucky slithers over him, a smooth, sinuous motion. The moonlight dyes his skin gray, and Rich can’t even bring himself to care as the hands wind around his wrists and knees straddle his sides. 

They kiss, and the feeling of golden power intensifies, filling him with warmth. It’s all he’s ever wanted in one place. It’s perfect. His hands, trapped as they are, don’t feel helpless. He wants this, too - he wants to not have to take charge, to constantly being the one making decisions, to have to suffer through bullshit after bullshit meeting…

“You can let go, Rich,” croons Lucky, sweet as the sigh of the long-lost sea. Rich feels like he’s home, listening to the Long Island surf crash against the rocks. The jetties of his adolescence, places he wandered, never to be found. “You can just sink into me, sweetheart.” Lucky is the one who sinks, however, the straddle now a sprawl as he shifts his entire body to cover Rich’s own, kisses trailing up Rich’s neck, toward his lips, a too-long tongue beginning to slide free. “Just  _ sink _ \--”

**BAM** .

There’s a sharp sound, the door kicked off its hinges, just about, followed by another sharp  **_bap_ ** ! As Eddie, livid and white-faced in the doorway, fires a gun with zero hesitation. He’s not half the marksman Rich is, but something guides the bullet home - it strikes the siren dead between the eyes and leaves a sizzling hole; a spray of black against the pillows and bedspread. The creature utters some sort of horrible wheeze before crumpling inward like a distorted, disorienting insect - leaving Rich beneath a shriveled, twitching corpse that smells like the rot of low tide.

“You okay?” Eddie barks, and, shutting the door behind himself, marches over to the bed to shove the remnants aside. Rich, ashen and shaky, simply looks up at Eddie with wide eyes, horrified. “It’s okay,” Eddie says automatically, clasping his hand, dragging him upright. Rich rises like a drowning man saved, sweat breaking out over the whole of his body. For a moment, when the thing was hovering over him, he’d seen something in those blackening eyes - something  _ wrong _ , but - 

It had looked back and seen  _ him _ . In a way he can’t explain.

“I got you,” Eddie is saying, and he’s wiping inky blood off Rich’s face, checking his lower lip, his jaw, his cheek - picking little pieces up as he goes, the pieces of the siren, the pieces of Rich, making them fit where they’re supposed to. “Let’s just - get you cleaned up and situated, okay?” Rich nods, and Eddie breathes - he didn’t seem to be doing that before. “I’ll take care of this. Go shower. No bath, just a shower, okay? Or pat yourself clean with a washcloth.” He seems about to say something else, as his lips form something with an “L” in it - but he opts instead for, “sorry. I’m so sorry I was gone so long.”

Rich goes through the motions of getting cleaned up, feeling the dull ache of the detox set in. Sirens are nasty things, and their secretions aren’t anything to be trifled with. As such, by the time he gets back to the main room, Eddie’s cleaned everything up with the intensity of a scullery maid. There’s no trace of the siren, or the bedspread he came apart on. Rich’s face fills with a fresh wave of heat, though he isn’t entirely sure why, when he sees Eddie perched on the chair by the desk in the motel room - 

One foot propped against the back of it, just like the siren’s body language at the bar.

Something in his blood runs cold, but Eddie turns, and the iciness ebbs like the tide. “I’m gonna take the floor. The bed still smells terrible, can’t stand it. You take the other bed.” Rich starts to protest, but Eddie holds up a hand. “Please. I insist.”

“I…” Rich’s voice cracks faintly, and he isn’t sure what he wants to say. Eddie saved his life tonight. There’s no mistake about that. As if reading his thoughts, Eddie tilts his head and looks between Rich and the remaining bed warily.

“...You want me to stay?” He asks, quietly. “In the bed with you? I can sleep on top’a the covers. Keep you extra safe.” The half-smile that tugs at the corner of his mouth isn’t as teasing as it’d normally be, but he makes every effort just the same. Rich manages a nod, and Eddie rocks to his feet, sliding his suspenders free, unclipping them to set them aside. “Alrighty. Lay down, get cozy.”

“...thank you,” Rich whispers, sliding under the bedspread of crinkly material; paisley pattern olive and pink and very outdated. Eddie settles in beside him, not quite looking his way, and Rich swallows weakly. “Just - I’m sorry. I should’ve - we should’ve talked before going, maybe, it was just--”

“Disappointing, we were both in a bad way,” Eddie agreed, and Rich felt the forgiveness that silently came his way wash over him, easing his heart. “We gotta communicate in the future. Even if we’re both pissed. Work in progress, even after all this time.” With a fond smile, Eddie shrugs himself closer, and, seemingly on a whim, puts his arm around Rich. “I got you, Richard. I mean it. I know you got my back, too.” 

Rich feels like crying at that, but he doesn’t. Somehow he manages to peak past the lump in his throat instead, murmuring: “I do. Thank you. I…” it’s as far as he gets before he just opts for leaning into the touch that keeps him steadier than he can ever explain. A gravity all its own. 

“How did you know?” Rich asks, letting his eyes slip shut. “Where I’d be, and - what it was?”

“When you didn’t show up to debrief at the diner, I knew somethin’ was wrong. You’re late a lotta the time, but you’re never late when it matters,” Eddie’s voice says. The timbre rumbles like a lowing engine, the motorcycle Eddie swears he doesn’t ride anymore - except to go clear his head. “And then you didn’t come at all,” Eddie presses on, “and I started thinkin’ about how close we are to water. And what the signs all point to. People forget that sirens don’t always mean ocean…”

Something else is said, but Rich is long gone at that point - dissolving into the sweet release of sleep that makes him think of soft caresses and full lips. He lets the riptide pull him under - 

And wakes to the feeling of warm, strong arms around him, his body pressed against Eddie’s own. It’s morning, and the air is full of the singing of birds and buzzing of insects. Somewhere, a rooster’s crowing. The motel sits undisturbed in the daylight, Eddie hardcore passed out all around him. He’s the big spoon, Rich realizes, bemused - protectively snuggled in under the covers, arms secure around Rich’s body. When he shifts back to look at Eddie over his shoulder, the man finally stirs, groggily mumbling himself into awareness again.

“...hey sailor,” Eddie offers, once his eyes have cracked and focused enough to take Rich in. Rich almost laughs, or cries, he doesn’t know which to go with, and instead lands on an offering of “hey”. 

For a moment just too long, Eddie’s thumbs stroking his arms, Rich feels like they might kiss. Especially with how Eddie’s half-lidded gaze drops to his mouth, and he can feel the slow shift of his own body pulling itself toward Eddie like the sun, but - 

The phone rings, and the two jerk apart, covers flying, bodies snapping to attention. Eddie finds the phone with a swear and picks up, curt voice irritated despite who must be on the other end of the line. 

They have another job. Already. No time to even come down from this one, there’s a witch on the loose wreaking havoc in - you guessed it - Oklahoma.

“Can’t we just drop a house on her?” Eddie hisses, scrambling into his socks and shoes as Rich dutifully began to pick up his own clothes, brow furrowing. The soldier in him was already moving on, knowing they had to, knowing there are no other choices, but - 

“I hear that only happens in Kansas,” he jokes, and Eddie makes a face at him that brings a grin to his own.

If they keep things light, if they just keep moving, maybe they won’t have to talk about what happened. Eddie’s offered him the opportunity to do so, but what can he possibly say? 

The siren manifests itself wrapped in the desires of its prey; its enemies. And there Lucky had been, full-lipped and golden-haired, with a cunning look in his eyes and all the praise and validation Rich could hope for.

The witch incident comes and goes, Rich hardly even remembers who was what and where - she’s an unhinged 50’s housewife of a woman in an A-Line dress with perfectly-coifed curls. Her mouth forms the hateful words of spells but Eddie deafens her in the cornfields with some well-placed AC/DC. He’s laughing when he does it, because it’s  _ ridiculous _ , isn’t it? She’s been seducing the townsfolk with pies and turning them into livestock for her farm. It’s like something out of a sitcom - 

Or it would’ve been, were it not for the fact that some of that livestock wound up  _ inside of the pies _ , and that the agents sent to deal with her perhaps aren’t as rested as they could be when taking her on, and residual side effects include - 

“This suit’s itchy,” Eddie complains on the ride back, the witch apprehended and sent to the facility upstate, far from their headquarters in the desert. They have ways of dealing with the difficult ones in other, less-comfortable “resorts” as it were. Rich has some feelings about that, and an uneasiness because - she clearly needs help, but - “it’s just - why would they give us suits that itch? Do they hate us? Is the government just  _ that  _ shitty?”

“Eddie,” Rich admonishes, but without much fighting spirit - baffled by the sudden openness of Eddie’s indignation, but also slightly amused. “They could be listening.”

“Let’em,” Eddie mutters, pressing his foot against the gas pedal to streak them off like a rocket toward “home” - 

“I got nothin’ to hide.”

And apparently, he doesn’t - between telling the secretary his tie’s ugly, by informing the doctor that her haircut doesn’t suit her face - “much too square” - by loudly asking whether or not management had any idea just how broken their system is - 

And Rich is left to deal with that, too, though he’s a little more delighted by it than he’d like to let on.

“Eddie,” Rich says gently - after hauling him out of the debrief with Adsit that could’ve gone considerably downhill following Eddie’s hotheaded declarations about his business practices [“or lack thereof, you smug and arrogant piece of--”], “I think you got hit with a truth spell.”

“Truth spell,” Eddie scoffs irritably, swinging around to look Rich in the eye once they’re safe in an abandoned section of hallway, “if that was the case, I’d be up in arms telling them all what I think of their red tape nonsense and their inability to help people who actually need it - they just sit there, day after day,  _ collecting  _ people, not  **actually** doing anything to help them! It’s classist bigotry, the likes of which are akin to--oh, shit.” Eddie’s face pales. “I think I got hit with a truth spell.”

Rich has to bite his lip to keep from laughing, and Eddie stares at him - 

That look, Rich realizes, of seeing no one else in the entire universe. It’s written in his face, every slackening line, every shimmer of his eyes, the wide wonderment of looking up into the night sky. For him. For him, right here, right now, not a siren’s trick, but - yes, there’s magic involved - 

“Look,” Rich says gently, “I agree with you. About them being - problematic. And, ah - how did you put it to Adsit?” A teasing smile tugs at the side of his mouth again. “‘Lazy, inconsiderate a-holes’?” Eddie grimaces, but nods nonetheless. Rich’s hands loosen on his arms, but still he holds on - as if a little afraid Eddie might saunter off and start up a new shitstorm. Which he’d love to see, but they’re both well past their own respective limits.

“You  _ agree _ !” Eddie whispers, so full of amazement and glee that - some part of it makes Rich weak in the knees - or it could just be the monumentally difficult couple of days they’ve just had, back to back - not to mention the long drive without much time to stretch their legs. 

“You’re as smart as you are handsome,” Eddie presses on, despite the pink color that covers Rich’s face, “and I can’t  _ believe  _ they managed to get you to do this job, your heart’s too good for it, you’re — wonderful and brilliant...” Suddenly, one of his arms slips free - but it’s just so Eddie can take Rich’s hand and look him in the eye again: “let’s dismantle this system in a big fiery way - and then I wanna kiss you again.” Rich’s heart skips another swooping, sickening beat. “Real,  _ real _ bad.”

Rich’s first thought, of course, is that...  _ that's the hottest thing he's  _ **ever** _ heard _ , but he blushes all over and tries to laugh that one off instead. When he manages to find words, they’re a playful, deflective: "whoa there, cowboy, no one's dismantling any systems until we get some food in you.”

He says nothing about the kiss, but he doesn’t have to - Eddie’s too busy clasping his face with a big besotted smile, hissing, “ _ see _ ? So smart. I’m starving, let’s go.” The hand that’s in his doesn’t let go, however - and Rich finds himself pulled away for the first meal they’ve had in hours. Days, maybe. 

Plenty of food for thought, however, surrounds them.

It’s just a matter of whether or not they’ll ever a chance to sit down and chew any of it over with how busy this broken system keeps them at all times.


End file.
